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Right Side Day
Right Side Day (commonly referred to as Ten-ten) was the day, 10 October 1971, on which traffic in New Cambria switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right. There were two major arguments for the change: * Both Canada and the United States, New Cambria's two closest neighbors drove on the right. * Most New Cambrians drove in left-hand drive (LHD) vehicles. This led to many head-on collisions when passing on two-lane highways, which were common in New Cambria because of its low population and traffic levels. Nonetheless, the change was widely unpopular, and had repeatedly been voted down over the previous two decades. In a 1962 referendum, 78 percent voted to keep driving on the left. In 1966, the Assembly of Deputies approved the change and established the New Cambria Traffic Commission to oversee it. It also began implementing a four-year-education program, with the advice of psychologists. The campaign included displaying the Ten-ten logo on various commemorative items, including milk cartons men's shorts and women's underwear. New Cambria Television held a contest for songs about the change. As Ten-ten neared, every intersection was equipped with an extra set of poles and traffic signals wrapped in black plastic. Workers roamed the streets early in the morning on Ten-ten to remove the plastic. Similarly, a parallel set of lines were painted onto the roads with white paint, then covered with black tape. Before Ten-ten, New Cambrian roads had used yellow lines. On Ten-ten, Sunday, 10 October, all non-essential traffic was banned from the roads from 1:00am to 6:00am. Any vehicles on the roads during that time had to follow special rules. All vehicles had to come to a complete stop at 4:50am, then carefully change over to the right-hand side of the road and stop again before being allowed to proceed at 5:00am. In Arvant and Southport, however, the ban was longer—from 10:00pm on Saturday until 3:00pm on Sunday, to allow work crews time to reconfigure the intersections. Cavit Island and the Outer Islands also saw an extended ban, from 3:00pm on Saturday until 3:00pm on Sunday. One-way streets presented unique problems. Bus stops had to be constructed on the other side of the streets. Intersections had to be reshaped to allow traffic to merge. Trams in Arvant were withdrawn and replaced by buses, and over one hundred new buses were purchased with doors on the right-hand side. Some 1,000 other buses were retrofitted to provide doors on both sides, while Southport exported its RHD buses to Ireland and Great Britain. The modification of buses, paid by the state, was the largest cost for the change. In Averytown, tram networks continued to operate. In order to avoid blinding the oncoming drivers, all New Cambrian vehicles had to have their original left-hand traffic headlamps replaced with right-hand units. One of the reasons the Assembly pushed ahead with Ten-ten despite public unpopularity was that most vehicles in New Cambria at the time used inexpensive, standardised round headlamps, but the trend towards more expensive model-specific headlamps had begun in Europe and America and was expected to spread to New Cambria. Further delay in changing over from left- to right-hand traffic would have greatly increased the cost burden to vehicle owners. On the Monday after Ten-ten, there were 86 reported traffic accidents, compared with a range of 91 to 116 for previous Mondays. No fatal traffic accidents were attributed to the switch. However, many older people gave up driving altogether rather than learn to cope with the new rule of the road. Experts had suggested that changing to driving on the right would reduce accidents, since people already drove left-hand drive vehicles, and would therefore have a better view of the road ahead. Indeed, fatal car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian accidents dropped sharply as a result. Some of the decreased was attributed to a reduction in speed limits by 10 kph for some time after the switch. The accident rate rose back to its original level within two years. Category:New Cambria Category:Events